Preliminary thoughts

[wiggling]

Just to relay some first impressions of my new X40, 1.2 GHz, bluetooth, 40 Gig drive, 1 Gig memory, IBM b/g wireless card (bought from CDW):

The bad news:

The build quality is good but not as good as my old A20p (15" screen). The keyboard is worse, and of course the screen/graphics are much worse. I have one dead pixel which is quite prominent. The space-bar often doesn't register and I need to rehit, and the "H" key almost popped off twice already. The intel gigabit ethernet port has problems with slower networks. Mozilla Firefox and Explorer have crappy looking fonts with this graphics controller (I've fiddled with the fonts a little but Yahoo chess on Explorer looks terrible despite my font choices. This was not a problem with the A20p).

The good news:

The build quality is good! The weight is well worth the trade off in power/speed and graphics. I got both the 8-cell and the wedge battery. So far I've used the 8-cell and the battery life is very good ~ 5+ hours. I suspect that the wedge is likely to be useless (although it is cute). My guess is two 8 cells are a better combination than a wedge and an 8-cell in terms of battery longevity and weight. The IBM b/g card works very well. The machine fits nicely into a size 5 brain cell from Tom Bihn. I already had the Brain Bag so this was perfect. The build quality of Tom Bihn bags is superb. I love carrying the machine around (which I would never do with the A20p). This is a machine you buy for portability. I've upgraded all the drivers/BIOS with no problems (got the latest intel drivers for the intel PRO/1000 MT).

I installed many applications, and performance definitely improved after defragmenting my hard drive. Highly recommended.

Future Plans:

Bluetooth headphones + the new Verizonwireless bluetooth Motorola V710 for anywhere internet access via Verizon's fast network (about dial up speed in practice but hopefully all wireless). Perhaps the logitech M900 bluetooth mouse? Anyone have comments or suggestions for any of these items?

Yet to activate the security chip or try upgrading the wireless drivers to the newest Atheros drivers to enable superG. Will give it a try when I return from this trip.